The 30-foot-tall granite statue of the slain civil rights leader — the first person who is not a president or fallen soldier to be honored with a major memorial on the mall — is the centerpiece of a $120 million, four-acre memorial to Dr. King.

Mr. Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader's son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha

Dr. King's statue is to be shipped here in a crate that supposedly says 'Made in China.' That's just obscene," Winfrey Young says

Originally posted by futuretense
Funny they couldn't find a Black firm/man to create this?............not even one in the US?

edit on 22-8-2011 by futuretense because: (no reason given)

solely on artistic ability.[64]

Gilbert Young, an African American artist known for a work of art entitled He Ain't Heavy, led a protest against the decision to hire Lei by launching the website King Is Ours, which demanded that an African American artist be used for the monument.[65] Human-rights activist and arts advocate Ann Lau and American stone-carver Clint Button joined Young and national talk-show host Joe Madison in advancing the protest when the use of Chinese granite was discovered.[66] Lau decried the human rights record of the Chinese government and asserted that the granite would be mined by workers forced to toil in unsafe and unfair conditions.[67] Button argued that the $10 million in federal money that has been authorized for the King project required it to be subject to an open bidding process.[68]

The memorial's design team visited China in October 2006 to inspect potential granite to be used.[69] The project's foundation has argued that the quality of the Chinese granite exceeds that which can be found in the United States.[70]